The ‘internet of things’ is what we get when we let machines talk to each other. Hoorah! Yippee! Our industry becomes ecstatic at the prospect of extra traffic generating additional revenues. In other words, our industry does what it always does: it starts counting the revenues before it considers the costs. And when I mean costs, I mean more than the up-front costs that make their way into a cost-benefit analysis. I mean the hidden costs, when things do not work properly, when customers are unhappy, and when we failed to consider the implications for what we are doing. After attending CES 2013, Andrew Rose of Forrester Research wrote a succinct but timely article for Wired, highlighting the security downside to the ‘internet of things’. You can read it here, and I recommend you do.
Underestimating the Internet of Things
